Welcome to the best site on the web for all things PHP-related! We’re glad you’ve decided to join our community here at PHPBuilder.com (“the Community”). Please take a few minutes to read and understand the content on this page.
Below, you’ll find the user guidelines (“the Guidelines”) for the Community. We know Guidelines such as these can be overwhelming in length on occasion, so let’s boil it down to three general requirements:
- Be helpful.
- Be constructive.
- Be friendly.
By participating in and using our Community, we’ll assume you’ve read and understood these Guidelines in their entirety, and that you agreed to follow them. As a result, your membership here will be treated accordingly. For that reason, we think it’s important for all users to take a few minutes to read through these Guidelines now, so that you’ll understand what’s expected of all our users.
Scope
These Guidelines address all aspects of your interaction with the Community, this site, and all other users. The Guidelines address both user content as well as user conduct. They prohibit certain kinds of behavior, whether that behavior takes place in public forum posts or in private messages between individual users, or between a user and any member of the Community’s moderation team.
Goals for the PHPBuilder.com Community
The PHPBuilder.com Community is designed to be a valuable, fun, and safe digital space for PHP developers and students of all ages, backgrounds, and levels of experience to gather and explore the subject of PHP. We want it to be a site that welcomes everyone who agrees to abide by the rules, to treat other members of the Community with respect and courtesy, and to give back to the Community where they can.
A Community like this, however, is most useful and valuable when it is filled with active, engaged users. Therefore, we want to encourage all Community members to start and participate in thoughtful, insightful conversations about topics that are related to PHP. If we are to meet these goals, it’s important that our Community is both safe and inclusive for all Community members and users, as long as they respect and abide by our Guidelines.
Consent to the Community Guidelines
If you in any way believe that our Community Guidelines are not being adhered to in any way by one or more of your fellow users, we urge you to notify a member of the moderation team. After such notification, our moderators will look into the matter and, if appropriate under the circumstances, will take whatever further actions may be in the best interests of the Community, consistent with these Guidelines.
By creating and using a member account here on PHPBuilder.com, you agree to be bound by both our terms of use and these Guidelines, as they exist at the time you sign up for a free account and as they may be modified in the future from time to time. You also agree to follow these Guidelines at all times in all of your interactions on, and use of, this site and its forum.
These Guidelines shall apply to all kinds of content, of every format including without limitation text, image files, links, and video, which you publish, share or post on PHPBuilder.com, and shall likewise apply to all of your interactions with other Community users.
The Community Guidelines
Our Community Guidelines are comprised of the following statements, which apply to all site and forum interactions as well as all content shared or posted on any part of the site.
1. While we encourage lively debate, we will tolerate no personal attacks, trolling, or mindless abuse. The purpose of the PHPBuilder.com Community is to encourage and host smart discussion of PHP-related topics. Abusive and hostile behavior towards others makes this difficult, if not impossible. As a result, any user engaging in persistent trolling, personal attacks, or abusive comments or behavior towards others are subject to temporary or permanent site bans.
2. Users must be mindful that our Community members are diverse and we consider that to be a strength. We tolerate respectful dissent, but we reserve the right to remove any content that may be seen as threatening or inappropriately offensive. Before you post, consider other users have differing beliefs and viewpoints; give thought to how your words may impact others before you post and moderate that content before posting.
3. As long as it remains fruitful and positive, we’re all for lively debate. If a thread devolves into a “flame war,” or if further discussion seems paralyzed by partisan beliefs or generalized statements unsupported by new, factual information, our moderation team may redirect, restrict, or put a halt to further comments.
4. Certain offensive content has absolutely no place in our Community. Any content that exhibits or reflects racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or that could be interpreted as such, is utterly prohibited at all times and in all parts of our Community. Rational, critical debate is fine. Attacking others on the basis of gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, race, national origin, religion, disability or age is not permitted, ever.
5. Any content that could trigger legal liability for the site, its owners, the users, or the moderation team is subject to immediate removal without prior notice. Examples of this kind of content could include without limitation statements that could support a charge of libel or defamation, or any content that may be posted in violation of someone else’s intellectual property rights. Users may not discuss illegal topics or the pursuit of illegal acts anywhere in the Community.
For example, discussion of how to “get around” copyright laws for image files, how to watch copyrighted movies online for free, how to join terrorist networks or illegally hack into someone else’s servers would all be strictly prohibited, and subject to immediate removal without notice. (This is not an exhaustive list, but is merely provided by way of illustration.) In addition, this kind of content could subject participating users to further consequences, including temporary or permanent bans.
6. Commercial or “spam” content is likewise prohibited. We want the Community to be a space for individuals to engage with each other on subjects related to PHP coding and web development; it is not intended to be a place to advertise for businesses, brands, or any commercial interests. Users are likewise prohibited from posting or sharing affiliate links, content of any kind that is designed to sell services or goods, or other types of similar content. In the same vein, we do not permit businesses or brands to participate in the Community by posing as individuals.
7. All forum content should remain on topic to the original post. Certainly message board conversations can range widely, but off-topic, unrelated content may be removed by the Community moderators.
8. We recognize that online text-based conversations are frequently challenging. It’s easy to misinterpret another’s tone, nuance, humor, sarcasm, and intent. As a result, a clever comeback can easily strike another user as hostile and insulting. As a member of this Community, you can help us to maintain a welcoming, open environment by keeping your contributions positive and reasonable in tone, even if another member is behaving in a way you think is unreasonable.
9. All members are expected to help our moderation team to maintain a safe environment for all members by promptly notifying moderators of any potential issues or violations of these Guidelines. We don’t expect, nor do we want, a member to report a comment simply because the member doesn’t like the tone or content, or doesn’t agree with the substance. In fact, abuse of the reporting Guideline may itself warrant further action against the member abusing this process.
10. Users are prohibited from engaging in any malicious conduct designed to interfere with the Community or the free, fair, and appropriate use of the PHPBuilder.com website or its users. Examples of prohibited conduct include without limitation fraud, spreading viruses or malware, phishing, “swatting,” deliberately spreading misinformation in an attempt to harass or wreak havoc on others, and any similar type of malicious conduct.
11. Any member who tries to circumvent a ban or a suspension (e.g., via a duplicate or “sock puppet” account or use of another user’s account) will be subject to further penalties, up to and including banning.
12. Any member who targets another user or group of users with threats of violence, whether express or implied, or with targeted harassment campaigns may be immediately suspended or banned without notice. This includes threats or attempts to subject another to DDOS or so-called “swatting” (or “SWAT”) attacks.
13. In no circumstances may a user disclose, post, share, or publish private information about another individual, whether that person is a user of this Community or not. Physical and mailing addresses, real names, locations, telephone numbers, social profile links, workplace information, etc. are all examples of private information which may not be disclosed on the site.
14. The sharing of sexually explicit content of any type on the site or in the Community is expressly prohibited. Any conduct that involves or depicts the exploitation of minors will be immediately reported to the appropriate law enforcement agency or agencies and the user shall be immediately and permanently banned.
Moderator Enforcement of Guidelines
In the event of any Guidelines violation or infraction, the site’s moderation team is responsible for determining the correct response and for taking whatever action may be appropriate under the circumstances.
Moderator action may include user action (such as a temporary suspension or limitation of posting rights) or content action (such as the removal or modification of the offending content). That decision rests solely in the hands of the moderators and may not be appealed.
While our moderators do not take modifying comments or banning users lightly, we feel that it’s our serious responsibility to maintain the Community experience at a consistently valuable, positive level for all of our members. In a sense, the needs of the many do in fact outweigh the needs of the few. Therefore, we reserve the right to take any and all actions consistent with that responsibility and our Guidelines, in order to preserve that safe, valuable digital space for all.
All moderator actions taken to enforce these Guidelines are final and not subject to appeal.